Labour candidate 'excluded from shortlist by Starmer loyalists who want a docile Senedd Labour group'

Martin Shipton

The decision to exclude a highly regarded activist from a shortlist of candidates was part of a strategy aimed at ensuring that the group of Welsh Labour Senedd Members elected in 2026 offers as little challenge as possible to Keir Starmer, a senior party figure has told us.

Business consultant Owain Williams was left off a shortlist of eight would-be MSs who will compete for places on Labour’s “closed list” in the newly created super-constituency of Caerdydd Ffynon Taf, which comprises the two Westminster seats of Cardiff North and Cardiff East.

Instead the shortlist includes six Cardiff councillors; Matt Hexter, the special adviser to Welsh Secretary Jo Stevens; and Shavanah Taj, the general secretary of TUC Cymru.

Under the Senedd’s new electoral system, six MSs will be elected to represent Caerdydd Ffynon Taf according to the proportion of votes cast for their parties. Local party members will decide the order in which Labour candidates would be elected.

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'Bad decision'

After learning that he hadn’t made the shortlist, Mr Williams posted a statement on social media that said: “I think this is a bad decision.

“Since announcing my candidacy, I’ve made a clear argument: we need to renew the party and the country, with new thinking and nothing that cannot be questioned. So many people, within the party and beyond, were excited by this. I think it’s a grave mistake not to allow the party membership in Caerdydd Ffynnon Taf the chance to vote on this platform.

“I’m grateful to every one of you who has supported my campaign to this point. Many of you took considerable political risk in doing so.

“Your encouragement has left me more convinced than ever that Welsh Labour and, more importantly, Wales needs nothing less than transformation. That work must go on, and I will play my part in every way I can.”

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'Speechless'

David Llewellyn Davies, who for a time was former First Minister Mark Drakeford’s senior special adviser, said in a social media post about Mr Williams’ exclusion from the list: “I am speechless. How can @WelshLabour have decided that one of its most gifted and talented members cannot make the top 8 in a shortlist for his own constituency? Wales denied an MS of Cabinet quality who would have made a positive difference to the lives of Welsh people.”

Others praised Mr Williams in similarly glowing terms, and First Minister Eluned Morgan, who appeared with him in an “in conversation” event at the National Eisteddfod in Wrexham on Monday August 4 described herself as a big fan of his.

She said: “Owain is a very talented guy and I’d like to see him as a candidate for the Senedd. I am a big fan of Owain Williams. Let’s see what happens. This is the beginning of a process.

“There are lots of other people in the same position. It’s important that the process is done fairly and I do hope that he will consider putting his name in for perhaps another seat.”

However, a senior Welsh Labour source told Nation.Cymru: “The decision about who was included on the shortlist, and more especially who was excluded, was made by a panel of the party’s Welsh Executive Committee (WEC). In practice, however, the decision was made by David Costa, a former long-serving deputy general secretary of Welsh Labour who has retired as a party employee, but now sits as a member of the WEC.”

Vaughan Gething

Mr Costa acted as Vaughan Gething’s agent during the Welsh Labour leadership campaign last year and was responsible for signing off the donations totalling £200,000 given to the campaign by convicted criminal David Neal, who received two suspended prison sentences after illegally dumping toxic sludge in the Gwent Levels, a protected wetland landscape near Cardiff. The donations, together with other scandals, led to Mr Gething’s resignation as party leader and First Minister after a few months.

The Welsh Labour source told us: “David Costa, together with Welsh Labour’s current general secretary Joe Lock and deputy general secretary Bridie Sedgebeer, the wife of Bridgend MP Chris Elmore, are Starmer loyalists.

“Their aim is to have a weakened Labour Senedd group that will not push for Wales’ interests over matters like the failure to devolve Crown Estate revenues to Wales, the unjust designation of HS2 as an England and Wales project and over other issues like the post-Brexit regional aid programme and welfare cuts.

“Their priority is not next year’s Senedd election, but the general election in 2029, and they want the new Senedd Labour group elected in 2026 to be docile and loyal to Starmer. That’s the reason why Owain Williams was excluded from the shortlist.

“In fact, the ideal outcome for the Starmer loyalists who run the party machine would be to have Labour out of control of the Welsh Government - a scenario that would give Jo Stevens as Welsh Secretary the opportunity to roll back devolution even further and take back control for the UK Labour government.

“They don't care about devolution or the Welsh language and they certainly don’t want someone of Owain Williams’ calibre coming into the group and shaking things up.”